Willis, Connie - Doomsday Book (v2.1)

by Doomsday Book (lit)

  "24837 here," the same woman's voice said. "H.F. Shepherds', Limited."

  "What number is this?" Dunworthy shouted.

  "24837," she said, exasperated.

  "24837," Dunworthy repeated. "That's the number I'm trying to reach."

  "No, it's not," Colin said, reaching across him to point to Andrews' number on the page. "You've mixed the numbers." He took the receiver away from Dunworthy. "Here, let me try it for you." He punched in the number and handed the receiver back to Dunworthy.

  The ringing sounded different, farther away. Dunworthy thought about Kivrin. The plague had not hit everywhere at once. It had been in Oxford at Christmas, but there was no way of knowing when it had reached Skendgate.

  There was no answer. He let the phone ring ten times, eleven. He could not remember which way the plague had come from. It had come from France. Surely that meant from the east, across the Channel. And Skendgate was west of Oxford. It might not have reached there until after Christmas.

  "Where's the book?" he asked Colin.

  "What book? Your appointment calendar, you mean? It's right here."

  "The book I gave you for Christmas. Why don't you have it?"

  "Here?" Colin said bewilderedly. "It weighs at least five stone."

  There was still no answer. Dunworthy hung up the receiver, snatched up the calendar, and started toward the door. "I expect you to keep it with you at all times. Don't you know there's an epidemic on?"

  "Are you all right, Mr. Dunworthy?"

  "Go and get it," Dunworthy said.

  "What, right now?"

  "Go back to Balliol and get it. I want to know when the plague reached Oxfordshire. Not the town. The villages. And which direction it came from."

  "Where are you going?" Colin asked, running alongside him.

  "To make Gilchrist open the laboratory."

  "If he won't open it because of the flu, he'll never open it for the plague," Colin said.

  Dunworthy opened the door and went out. It was raining hard. The EC protesters were huddled under Infirmary's overhand. One of them started toward him, proffering a flyer. Colin was right. Telling Gilchrist the source would have no effect. He would remain convinced the virus had come through the net. He would be afraid to open it for fear the plague would come through.

  "Give me a sheet of paper," he said, fumbling for his pen.

  "A sheet of paper?" Colin said. "What for?"

  Dunworthy snatched the flyer from the EC protester and began scribbling on the back. "Mr. Basingame is authorizing the opening of the net," he said.

  Colin peered at the writing. "He'll never believe that, Mr. Dunworthy. On the back of a flyer?"

  "Then fetch me a sheet of paper!" he shouted.

  Colin's eyes widened. "I will. You wait here, all right?" he said placatingly. "Don't leave."

  He dashed back inside and reappeared immediately with several sheets of hardcopy paper. Dunworthy snatched it from him and scrawled the orders and Basingame's name. "Go and fetch your book. I'll meet you at Brasenose."

  "What about your coat?"

  "There's no time," he said. He folded the paper in fourths and jammed it inside his jacket.

  "It's raining. Shouldn't you take a taxi?" Colin said.

  "There aren't any taxis." He started off down the street.

  "Great-Aunt Mary's going to kill me, you know," Colin called after him. "She said it was my responsibility to see that you got your inoculation."

  He should have taken a taxi. It was pouring by the time he reached Brasenose, a hard slanting rain that would be sleet in another hour. Dunworthy felt chilled to the bone.

  The rain had at least driven the picketers away. There was nothing in front of Brasenose but a few wet flyers they had dropped. An expandable metal gate had been pulled across the front of the entrance to Brasenose. The porter had retreated inside his lodge, and the shutter was down.

  "Open up! " Dunworthy shouted. He rattled the gate loudly. "Open up immediately!"

  The porter pulled the shutter up and looked out. When he saw it was Dunworthy, he looked alarmed and then belligerent. "Brasenose is under quarantine," he said. "It's restricted."

  "Open this gate immediately," Dunworthy said.

  "I'm afraid I can't do that, sir," he said. "Mr. Gilchrist has given orders that no one be admitted to Brasenose until the source of the virus is discovered."

  "We know the source," Dunworthy said. "Open the gate."

  The porter let the shutter down, and in a minute he came out of the lodge and over to the gate. "Was it the Christmas decorations?" he said. "They said the ornaments were infected with it."

  "No," Dunworthy said. "Open the gate and let me in."

  "I don't know whether I should do that, sir," he said, looking uncomfortable. "Mr. Gilchrist ... "

  "Mr. Gilchrist isn't in charge any more," he said. He pulled the folded paper out of his jacket and poked it through the metal gate at the porter.

  He unfolded it and read it, standing there in the rain.

  "Mr. Gilchrist is no longer Acting Head," Dunworthy said. "Mr. Basingame has authorized me to take charge of the drop. Open the gate."

  "Mr. Basingame," he said, peering at the already-blotted signature. "I'll find the keys," he said.

  He went back in the lodge, taking the paper with him. Dunworthy huddled against the gate, trying to keep out of the freezing rain and shivering.

  He had been worried about Kivrin sleeping on the cold ground, and she was in the middle of a holocaust, where people froze to death because no one was left on their feet to chop wood and the animals died in the fields because no one was left alive to bring them in. Eighty thousand dead in Siena, three hundred thousand in Rome, more than a hundred thousand in Florence. One half of Europe.

  The porter finally emerged with a large ring of keys and came over to the gate. "I'll have it open in a moment, sir," he said, sorting through the keys.

  Kivrin would surely have gone back to the drop as soon as she realized it was 1348. She would have been there all this time, waiting for the net to open, frantic that they hadn't come to get her.

  If she had realized. She would have no way of knowing she was in 1348. Badri had told her the slippage would be several days. She would have checked the date against the Advent holy days and thought she was exactly where she was supposed to be. It would never have occurred to her to ask the year. She would think she was in 1320, and all the time the plague would be sweeping toward her.

  The gate's lock clicked free, and Dunworthy pushed it together far enough to squeeze through. "Bring your keys," he said. "I need you to unlock the laboratory."

  "That key's not on here," the porter said, and disappeared into the lodge again.

  It was icy in the passage, and the rain came slanting in, colder still. Dunworthy huddled next to the door of the lodge, trying to catch some of the heat from inside and jammed his hands hard against the bottoms of his jacket pockets to stop the shivering.

  He had been worried about cutthroats and thieves, and all this time she had been in 1348, where they had piled the dead in the streets, where they had burned Jews and strangers at the stake in their panic.

  He had been worried about Gilchrist not doing parameter checks, so worried that he had infected Badri with his anxiety, and Badri, already feverish, had refed the coordinates. So worried.

  He realized suddenly that the porter had been gone too long, that he must be warning Gilchrist.

  He moved toward the door, and as he did, the porter emerged, carrying an umbrella and exclaiming over the cold. He offered half the umbrella to Dunworthy.

  "I'm already wet through," Dunworthy said and strode off ahead of him through the quad.

  The door of the laboratory had a yellow plastic banner stretched across it. Dunworthy tore it off while the porter searched through his pockets for the key to the alarm, switching the umbrella from hand to hand.

  Dunworthy glanced up behind him at Gilchrist's rooms. They overlooked the l
aboratory, and there was a light on in the sitting room, but Dunworthy couldn't detect any movement.

  The porter found the flat cardkey that switched off the alarm. He switched it off and began looking for the key to the door. "I'm still not certain I should unlock the laboratory without Mr. Gilchrist's authorization," he said.

  "Mr. Dunworthy!" Colin shouted from halfway across the quad. They both looked up. Colin came racing up, drenched to the skin with the book under his arm, wrapped in the muffler. "It -- didn't -- hit -- parts of Oxfordshire -- till -- March," he said, stopping between words to catch his breath. "Sorry. I -- ran -- all the way."

  "What parts?" Dunworthy asked.

  Colin handed the book to him and bent over, his hands on his knees, taking deep noisy breaths. "It -- doesn't -- say."

  Dunworthy unwound the muffler and opened the book to the page Colin had turned down, but his spectacles were too spattered with rain to read it, and the open pages were promptly soaked.

  "It says it started in Melcombe and moved north to Bath and east. It says it was in Oxford at Christmas and London the next October, but that parts of Oxfordshire didn't get it till late spring, and that a few individual villages were missed until July."

  Dunworthy stared blindly at the unreadable pages. "That doesn't tell us anything," he said.

  "I know," Colin said. He straightened up, still breathing hard, "but at least it doesn't say the plague was all through Oxfordshire by Christmas. Perhaps she's in one of those villages it didn't come to till March."

  Dunworthy wiped the wet pages with the dangling muffler and shut the book. "It moved east from Bath," he said softly. "Skendgate's just south of the Oxford-Bath road."

  The porter had finally decided on a key. He pushed it into the lock.

  "I rang up Andrews again, but there was still no answer."

  The porter opened the door.

  "How are you going to run the net without a tech?" Colin said.

  "Run the net?" the porter said, the key still in his hand. "I understood that you wished to obtain data from the computer. Mr. Gilchrist won't allow you to run the net without authorization." He took out Basingame's authorization and looked at it.

  "I'm authorizing it," Dunworthy said and swept past him into the lab.

  The porter started in, caught his open umbrella on the doorframe, and fumbled on the handle for the catch.

  Colin ducked under the umbrella and in after Dunworthy.

  Gilchrist must have turned the heat off. The laboratory was scarcely warmer than the outside, but Dunworthy's spectacles, wet as they were, steamed up. He took them off and tried to wipe them dry on his wet suit jacket.

  "Here," Colin said and handed him a wadded length of paper tissue. "It's lavatory paper. I've been collecting it for Mr. Finch. The thing is, it's going to be difficult enough to find her if we land in the proper place, and you said yourself that getting the exact time and place are awfully complicated."

  "We already have the exact time and place," Dunworthy said, wiping his spectacles on the lavatory paper. He put them on again. They were still blurred.

  "I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to leave," the porter said. 'I cannot allow you in here without Mr. Gilchrist's -- " He stopped.

  "Oh, blood," Colin muttered. "It's Mr. Gilchrist."

  "What's the meaning of this?" Gilchrist said. "What are you doing here?"

  "I'm going to bring Kivrin through," Dunworthy said.

  "On whose authority?" Gilchrist said. "This is Brasenose's net, and you are guilty of unlawful entry." He turned on the porter. "I gave you orders that Mr. Dunworthy was not to be allowed on the premises."

  "Mr. Basingame authorized it," he said. He held the damp paper out.

  Gilchrist snatched it from him. "Basingame!" He stared down at it. "This isn't Basingame's signature," he said furiously. "Unlawful entry and now forgery. Mr. Dunworthy, I intend to file charges. And when Mr. Basingame returns, I intend to inform him of your -- "

  Dunworthy took a step toward him. "And I intend to inform Mr. Basingame how his Acting Head of Faculty refused to abort a drop, how he intentionally endangered an historian, how he refused to allow access to this laboratory and how as a result the historian's temporal location could not be determined." He waved his arm at the console. "Do you know what this fix says? This fix that you wouldn't let my tech read for ten days because of a lot of imbeciles who don't understand time travel, including you? Do you know what it says? Kivrin's not in 1320. She's in 1348, in the middle of the Black Death." He turned and gestured toward the screen. "And she's been there two weeks. Because of your stupidity. Because of -- " He stopped.

  "You have no right to speak to me that way," Gilchrist said. "And no right to be in this laboratory. I demand that you leave immediately."

  Dunworthy didn't answer. He took a step toward the console.

  "Call the proctor," Gilchrist said to the porter. "I want them thrown out."

  The screen was not only blank but dark, and so were the function lights above it on the console. The power switch was turned to off. "You've switched off the power," Dunworthy said, and his voice sounded as old as Badri's had. "You've shut down the net."

  "Yes," Gilchrist said, "and a good thing, too, since you feel you have the right to barge in without authorization."

  He put a hand out blindly toward the blank screen, staggering a little. "You've shut down the net," he repeated.

  "Are you all right, Mr. Dunworthy?" Colin said, taking a step forward.

  "I thought you might attempt to break in and open the net," Gilchrist said, "since you seem to have no respect for Mediaeval's authority. I cut off the power to prevent that happening, and it appears I did the right thing."

  Dunworthy had heard of people being struck down by bad news. When Badri had told him Kivrin was in 1348, he had not been able to absorb what it meant, but this news seemed to strike him with a physical force, knocking the wind out of him so that he couldn't catch his breath. "You shut the net down," he said. "You've lost the fix."

  "Lost the fix?" Gilchrist said. "Nonsense. There are backups and things surely. When the power's switched on again -- "

  "Does this mean we don't know where Kivrin is?" Colin asked.

  "Yes," Dunworthy said, and thought as he fell, I am going to hit the console like Badri did, but he didn't. He fell almost gently, like a man with the wind knocked out of him, and collapsed like a lover into Gilchrist's outstretched arms.

  "I knew it," he heard Colin say. "This is because you didn't get your enhancement. Great-Aunt Mary's going to kill me."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  "That's impossible," Kivrin said. "It can't be 1348," but it all made sense, Imeyne's chaplain dying, and their not having any servants, Eliwys's not wanting to send Gawyn to Oxford to find out who Kivrin was. "There is much illness there," Lady Yvolde had said, and the Black Death had hit Oxford at Christmas in 1348. "What happened?" she said, and her voice rose out of control. "What happened? I was supposed to go to 1320. 1320! Mr. Dunworthy told me I shouldn't come, he said Mediaeval didn't know what they were doing, but they couldn't have sent me to the wrong year!" She stopped. "You must get out of here! It's the Black Death!"

  They all looked at her so uncomprehendingly that she thought the interpreter must have lapsed into English again. "It's the Black Death," she said again. "The blue sickness!"

  "Nay," Eliwys said softly, and Kivrin said, "Lady Eliwys, you must take Lady Imeyne and Father Roche down to the hall."

  "It cannot be," she said, but she took Lady Imeyne's arm and led her out, Imeyne clutching the poultice as if it were her reliquary. Maisry darted after them, her hands clutched to her ears.

  "You must go, too," Kivrin said to Roche. "I will stay with the clerk."

  "Thruuuu ... " the clerk murmured from the bed, and Roche turned to look at him. The clerk struggled to rise, and Roche started toward him.

  "No!" Kivrin said, and grabbed his sleeve. "You mustn't go near him." She interposed herself between
him and the bed. "The clerk's illness is contagious," she said, willing the interpreter to translate. "Infectious. It is spread by fleas and by ... " she hesitated, trying to think how to describe droplet infection, "by the humours and exhalations of the ill. It is a deadly disease, which kills nearly all who come near it."

  She watched him anxiously, wondering if he had understood anything she'd said, if he could understand it. There had been no knowledge of germs in the 1300's, no knowledge of how diseases spread. The contemps had believed the Black Death was a judgment from God. They had thought it was spread by poisonous mists which floated across the countryside, by a dead person's glance, by magic.

  "Father," the clerk said, and Roche tried to step past Kivrin, but she barred his way.

  "We cannot leave them to die," he said.

  They did, though, she thought. They ran away and left them. People abandoned their own children, and doctors refused to come, and all the priests fled.

  She stooped and picked up one of the strips of cloth Lady Imeyne had torn for her poultice. "You must cover your mouth and nose with this," she said.

  She handed it to him and he looked at it, frowning, and then folded it into a flat packet and held it to his face.

  "Tie it," Kivrin said, picking up another one. She folded it diagonally and put it over her nose and mouth like a bandit's mask and tied it in a knot in the back. "Like this."

  Roche obeyed, fumbling with the knot, and looked at Kivrin. She moved aside, and he bent over the clerk and put his hand on his chest.

  "Don't -- "she said, and he looked up at her. "Don't touch him any more than you have to."

  She held her breath as Roche examined him, afraid that he would start up suddenly again and grab at Roche, but he didn't move at all. The bubo under his arm had begun to ooze blood and a slow greenish pus.

  Kivrin put a restraining hand on Roche's arm. "Don't touch it," she said. "He must have broken it when we were struggling with him." She wiped the blood and pus away with one of Imeyne's cloth strips and bound up the wound with the last one, tying it tightly at the shoulder. The clerk did not wince or cry out, and when she looked at him she saw he was staring straight ahead, unmoving.